Recommended For Kids

ICE STORY: Shackleton's Lost Expedition, by Elizabeth Cody
Kimmel. (Clarion Books, $18; grades 6-12.) Recent years have seen a
cultural fixation on the derring-do of mountaineers, balloonists, and
others exploring "new" frontiers. The resulting movies, books, and
magazine articles have delivered the promised thrills and chills, but
there's a cheap feel to them, particularly when the adventurers are
millionaires who have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to go where
dozens of men and women have gone before.

As the century draws to a close, Kimmel's book serves as a handy
reminder of what the term "explorer" meant in the early 1900s. Sir
Ernest Shackleton's 1914 expedition to cross Antarctica was ultimately
a failure—the crew of 28 men was stranded for more than two
years—but it is a remarkable story of courage and endurance.

In the book's opening pages, Kimmel offers a quick tour of
Shackleton's childhood in Ireland and England, as well as a telling
anecdote about the future explorer: His parents one day found him in
the backyard trying to dig a tunnel to Australia.

After his training in the British mercantile marine, Shackleton made
his first voyage to Antarctica in 1901 on an expedition led by famed
explorer Robert Falcon Scott. Scott's team failed to reach the South
Pole, but Shackleton returned in 1907 at the head of his own
expedition. His men came within 97 miles of the Pole and became the
first to climb Mt. Erebus, a feat that earned Shackleton a British
knighthood.

When Norwegian Roald Amundsen reached the Pole in 1911, Shackleton
shifted his focus to another first: a coast-to-coast crossing of
Antarctica. In 1914, he launched the Imperial TransAntarctic
Expedition, with plans to sail a wooden, three-mast ship—aptly
named Endurance— to the continent's northern coast, then
trek 1,800 miles through the Pole to the southern coast. Disaster
struck, however, as ice stalled and then crushed the ship, forcing the
crew to abandon Endurance and camp on ice floes in the Weddell
Sea for five months. Finally, the ice broke, and the men launched the
ship's three lifeboats. After a journey marked by numbing cold, tidal
waves, and killer whales, they landed on Elephant Island, off the
northernmost tip of the continent.

The crew found relative safety on the island but was still stranded.
Kimmel's account of the expedition's harrowing circumstances is
dramatic and heartbreaking. Drawing heavily on the men's diaries, she
describes how they hunted seal and penguin to stay alive and slept in
damp clothes and sleeping bags in temperatures well below freezing. At
one campsite, Kimmel writes, "ice fragments the size of dinner plates
blew through the air, making even a brief walk down the beach a
dangerous expedition."

The book features a generous number of black-and-white photographs
taken by the expedition's photographer, Frank Hurley. Hurley, who
lugged the fragile, glass negatives for his photos throughout the
journey, captured dramatic images of the wreck of the Endurance
as well as painful portraits of the haggard crew.

In the end, all the men were rescued, thanks to the heroics of
Shackleton, who set off with five men in a 22-foot lifeboat for South
Georgia Island, 800 miles away. After surviving the open-sea journey,
these men endured a treacherous trek across the island to reach help at
a whaling station.

Though Shackleton never made it to the Pole, Kimmel portrays him as
a true adventurer who led his men with incredible calm in the face of
unimaginable danger. In the book's epilogue, she quotes Sir Edmund
Hillary, the first man to climb Everest: "For scientific discovery,
give me Scott; for speed and efficiency of travel, give me Amundsen;
but when disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees
and pray for Shackleton."

Adults and older teens will probably enjoy The Endurance:
Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition , by Caroline
Alexander, who is the curator for a Shackelton exhibition that recently
opened at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

--Barbara Hiron

TRUE HEART, by Marissa Moss, with illustrations by C.F.
Payne. (Silver Whistle, $16; grades K-3.) Children's literature is
plump with picture books and novels about young women of the past who,
with lots of desire and more than a little luck, rise above common,
everyday life to accomplish great things. Set in the late 19th century,
this story about a young railroad worker who wins a coveted job as a
train engineer is the latest in the genre.

Left to support her eight brothers and sisters when her parents die
of typhus, Bee gives up a tedious job washing clothes for more
lucrative work loading freight cars in the Cheyenne, Wyoming, rail
yards. But what she really wants is to drive the locomotive. So
whenever she can, she rides with the engineers in the cab, watching and
learning. One seasoned engineer, Ole Pete Morgan, even lets her drive
an occasional stretch of track. Of course, the others on her work crew
tease her mercilessly about her foolish dreams.

Moss, who read a number of turn-of-the-century diaries of young
women to give her character authenticity, tells the story through Bee's
eyes. The first-person narrative starts out slow but picks up steam
when a gang of bandits attempts to rob a cross-country train known as
True Heart just outside of Cheyenne. The robbery fails, but Ole Pete,
who happens to be driving True Heart that day, takes a bullet in the
arm. With no one else available to step in for him and a fancy-pants
passenger protesting loudly about the delay, Bee gets her big
break.

It's an engaging, if far-fetched, story that kids of both sexes will
enjoy. After all, what boy or girl hasn't dreamed of driving a train or
some other enormous vehicle? But the real excitement here is not in the
prose; it's in the warm and richly detailed illustrations. Payne puts
the reader in each scene, whether it's the busy loading dock in the
Cheyenne rail yard or the sooty cab of a speeding train. On one page,
we're looking down the barrel of a gun during a hold up; on another,
we're peering over someone's shoulder, listening in on a conversation.
Although this is the illustrator's first children's book, many adult
readers will recognize his distinctive style from his work for
Time and the Atlantic Monthly . (He also has created five
stamps for the U.S. Postal Service.) Perhaps he has found a new niche
for his talents.

Together, Payne and Moss have created an upbeat yarn about a
memorable character, a confident young woman who refuses to be
discouraged or outdone by any mere man.

--Blake Rodman

SUNDAY WEEK, by Dinah Johnson, with illustrations by
Tyrone Geter. (Henry Holt, $15.95; grades K-2.) From the Monday
blues to Thursday's library visit to Saturday's chores, this charming
picture book takes the reader through each day of the week as a child
waits for Sunday, her favorite day of all. The text touches on the
importance of church and faith in the life of the child and her
cohesive African American community, but it in no way proselytizes.
Geter's stunning charcoal and pastel illustrations, done on colored
paper, perfectly complement Johnson's rhythmic verse.

THE SNAKE SCIENTIST, by Sy Montgomery, with photographs by
Nic Bishop. (Houghton Mifflin, $16; grades 3-6.) Zoologist Bob
Mason-a.k.a., the Snake Scientist-travels every spring to Northern
Manitoba in Canada to study the thousands of red-sided garter snakes
that slither from their underground hibernation in limestone pits and
writhe in piles two feet high. Mason's enthusiasm for these reptiles is
catching as he describes how they mate and migrate to a marsh.
Intriguing photographs of these curious critters add to the fun.

THE SEA MONSTER'S SECRET, by Malka Drucker, with
illustrations by Christopher Aja. (Harcourt Brace, $16; grades
1-3.) Suffering the insults of his nagging and spiteful
mother-in-law, a young American Indian from the Tlingit tribe sets off
to find a legendary sea monster. After bravely killing the ferocious
beast, he dons the monster's skin and, to his surprise and delight,
begins a series of underwater adventures that make him a hero and drive
away his wife's mother. The author has skillfully adapted this tale
from Alaskan totem pole art. The acrylic and gouache artwork bursts
from the page in vibrant colors and bold images.

GOLD FEVER, by Verla Kay, with illustrations by S.D.
Schindler. (Putnam, $15.99; grades K-2.) The rhyming text and
humorous colored-pencil illustrations make this story about farmer
Jasper, who gets gold fever and heads West with the forty-niners, a fun
primer on the California gold rush. Like many other miners of the time,
Jasper finds bobcats, bears, and rattlesnakes, but no gold. Finally, he
quits his claim and heads back to family and farm, a wiser man.

WHEN JFK WAS MY FATHER, by Amy Gordon. (Houghton Mifflin,
$15; grades 6-8.) When her banker father and would-be socialite
mother separate in 1963, 13-year-old Georgia decides that President
John F. Kennedy ought to be her father. Dispatched to boarding school,
she writes (but never mails) funny and revealing letters to "Jack"
about her ups and downs. This is a bizarre but refreshingly upbeat
novel.

A LITTLE BIT OF WINTER, by Paul Stewart, with
illustrations by Chris Riddell. (HarperCollins, $12.95; grades
K-2.) Two friends, Rabbit and Hedgehog, experience winter
differently: Rabbit forages, while Hedgehog hibernates. Hedgehog longs
to know what winter "feels" like, so Rabbit promises to preserve a bit
of winter for when his pal wakes in the spring. But how? It's an
endearing story of friendship, with illustrations to match.

JANEY'S GIRL, by Gayle Friesen. (Kids Can Press, $14.95;
young adult.) Claire, 14, has little sense of her family: She has
never met her father, and her mom, Janey, refuses to speak about her
own childhood. But when Claire's grandfather dies, mother and daughter
visit Janey's hometown, and the past reveals itself in a way much more
complicated than Claire dreamed of. This is a moving story of estranged
family members and misplaced pride.

--Barbara Hiron and Blake Rodman

Vol. 10, Issue 7, Pages 51-52

Published in Print: April 1, 1999, as Recommended For Kids

Related Stories

For a complete listing (since September 1998) of Teacher's picks
for students and teachers, read "Teacher Recommends ..."

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